Memoirs, Substack, and psychology
The English poet Blake Morrison had an excellent, thought-provoking essay in The Guardian titled '‘Enough of this me me me’: Blake Morrison on memoir in the age of oversharing' on April 4. He traced the evolution of memoir from a self-congratulatory genre for the accomplished to today's more "confessionalist" texts that are open to everyone, concluding that both forms have value — with a twist. In the course of his discourse, he arrives at two particular conclusions that struck me because he overlooks their real causes and skips a chance to clarify how cultural and institutional forces also shape literary form.
(i)
If memoirists can make a living through online snippets (with enough subscriptions, Substack pays well), why worry about publication in print? What’s so sacrosanct about a physical book?
For myself – no social media junkie – I think published memoirs have plenty to offer that social platforms can’t, not least the rewards of a full-length story with a narrative arc, a set of characters, and an approach that doesn’t depend on sensational self-exposure, allowing room for reversals, surprises, digressions, complications and a tussle between adversity and reprieve. At their best, memoirs develop with a subtlety unavailable in a short extract and the writer faces bigger issues than how much to share – which tense to use, what stretch of time to cover, how many points of view to accommodate, and what resolution to offer, if any, since a life story written by a living person won’t have ended. Far from exulting in the drama of the tale they’re telling, memoir writers face the worry that it’s humdrum and inconsequential. Success lies in the quality of the telling, not in the shamelessness of the tale.
That said, the aforementioned passage caught my eye because it seems to imply that writing via a publisher and unto a physical book will give rise to everything from a "full-length story with a narrative arc" to "allowing room for adversity … and reprieve" — whereas that writing for Substack cannot. This is true, but it is true for a reason that does not come through here: writing with a publisher gets you an editor, and if they are good they will empathise with your narrative, your stories, and they will guide you to improving it only the way a professional editor who knows how, and importantly why, good writing works. The reason writing for Substack does not get you these improvements is not because the platform magically disallows them but because the people who publish on Substack, or any blogging or newsletter platform for that matter, have elected to not have a second pair of eyes on their draft.
Substack adoption bloomed in 2020 and many journalists, opinionists, commentators, and pundits migrated from indie platforms and legacy news publishers, because of Substack's then-relatively-simpler options to monetise their content and/or to avoid what they perceived to be censorship. Democratising information benefits from democratising the platforms from which they can be broadcast, and Substack did help. But it also helped people with statements or opinions that an editor would have massaged or altogether removed sidestep that check keep talking (and is why many less-than-good opinions have come to be identified with Substack itself). Good editors often push back and without that it is easy to believe everything one has to say is correct and that more people should hear it.
But if a Substacker has an editor, they could get the same experience Blake Morrison says they would with a good publisher.
(ii)
What was once a geriatric, self-satisfied genre … is now open to anyone with a story to tell – “nobody memoirs”, the American journalist Lorraine Adams has called them. Candour is the key, no matter how fraught the consequences. “Most writers I know,” Maggie Nelson writes in The Argonauts, “nurse persistent fantasies about the horrible things – or the horrible thing – that will happen to them if and when they express themselves as they desire”. But she takes that risk, addressing the book to “you”, her fluidly gendered husband Harry (who’s angry when she shows him a draft), while exploring identity, pregnancy, motherhood and sexuality.
“The words I love you come tumbling out of my mouth in an incantation the first time you fuck me in the ass, my face smashed against the concrete floor”; this appears in the first paragraph of The Argonauts in 2015. It’s hard to imagine an author volunteering that 30 years ago, or being allowed to be so passionately upfront (and violently facedown) at the start of the story. …
Shock is an integral part of memoir and sometimes the facts are shocking, without embroidery. … In literature the mode used to be called confessionalism. These days, pejoratively, it’s called oversharing. At best it prompts welcome recognition: Wow, great, here’s someone who’s had the same experiences, thoughts and feelings that I’ve had. But there’s often resistance as well: Ugh. TMI. I don’t need to know this. When the divulgence is sad-fishing on Facebook, curated self-glorification on Instagram or out-there revelation in a memoir, readers may feel irritated or affronted. … It’s not essential for writers to bean-spill, after all. They’re not victims on a talkshow, outmanoeuvred by Jerry Springer or Jeremy Kyle; they’re writing on their own terms and in control of what’s committed to print.
An important detail Blake Morrison leaves unwritten here — plausibly because that gives his readers "room to interpret and explore" — is mental health. Specifically, public awareness of mental well-being, of the forms and ways by which trauma can be inflicted, and how it can be healed is more widespread today than it was only two decades ago. Granted, in some geographies, including India, there is still a long way to go, but it is not inconsiderable. Awareness is all the more pronounced, if also often inchoate, on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. And I would be really surprised if this had nothing to do with the rise of "nobody memoirs" that — at least in their best forms — have breached the shame associated with weirdness, idiosyncrasies, and the simple freedom to be one's own person.
